….the shiny things in the sky, that is, not the walk-the-red-carpet kind.

Earlier this week Jim and I arrived home from an event after dark and noticed the sky was full of stars. We’ve spent the past 25 years or so living in cities where its rare to actually see stars because of light and general pollution, so when they are present, you really notice them.

Like any true romantic who finds himself alone under a starry sky with the love of his life, Jim pulled out his Droid (no, that’s not code for something else), and said, “I’ve got an app for that!” He opened Google Sky Map, pointed it toward the sky, and amazingly there was a map with a description of everything we were looking at. I have always been one of those people who could never quite see what was being described when someone would point to the sky and wave their finger around drawing some type of air picture and say things like…..”see those stars over there, there, and there are the Big Dipper, and there’s Orion’s Belt and that over there must be Saturn or maybe its Jupiter.” I’d look at those pictures with the drawings like some big connect-the-dot puzzle and think I must not be looking at the same sky. I’m astronomically impaired. But this made it easy because you could just point it right at the part of the sky you’re looking at, and it puts the image on the phone and spells it out.